Mac Admins Podcast

The world is changing, often violently, and maybe not for the better? The move toward LLMs and artificial intelligence is definitely doing a number on the profession and this week, we're talking with Erin Merchant from Risotto about her 2026 Mac AD talk on the state of hiring and jobs in the IT industry.
Hosts:
Tom Bridge - @tbridge@theinternet.social
Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom
Selina Ali - LinkedIn
Guests:
Erin Merchant - LinkedIn

Links:
Erin's Talk at Mac AD: AI and IT Staffing, or How to Blow Up a Hiring Pipeline | Erin Merchant
Puddles Pity Party: Party Sad Clown Stuns Crowd with Sia's Chandelier - America's Got Talent 2017
Sponsors:
Iru

Fleet Device Management
Workbrew
Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email podcast@macadmins.org for more information.
Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!
The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson

This week, it's just us hosts! We're catching up on everything that's come down the pike during beta season: new payloads, new DDM functionality, and bugs of course. We'll also talk about how Siri might be good now, how everything's more expensive, and more.
Hosts:
Tom Bridge - @tbridge@theinternet.social
Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom
Selina Ali - LinkedIn
Links:
X World - https://xworld.au/index.php
PSU Mac Admins https://www.youtube.com/@MacAdmins/videos
Arek's Talk: Platform SSO State of the Union – Arek Dreyer
https://mashable.com/tech/dell-xps-13-announcement-computex-macbook-neo-alternative
https://x.com/Ahmadansari2233/status/2050105084382740919
Sponsors:
Iru

Fleet Device Management
Workbrew
Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email podcast@macadmins.org for more information.
Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!
The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson

Anyone who has spent any time in our Apple world knows that the Mac Admins Community is a unique and special place for us to collectively celebrate our wins, mourn our lows, and help each other out when we are faced with a tricky problem. Within that community there are user groups that are all over the world - these are community run and led by volunteers focussed on fostering a sense of togetherness near and far. For this episode we wanted to highlight one of the community user groups and welcome Juan and Cesar to tell us more about Mac Admins Latin America.
Hosts:
Tom Bridge - @tbridge@theinternet.social
Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom
Selina Ali - LinkedIn
Guests:
Juan Taveras, IT Leader - LinkedIn
Cesar Santana, Sys Admin, Karat - LinkedIn
Links:
https://macadmins-latam.org/

Sponsors:
Iru
Fleet Device Management
Workbrew
Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email podcast@macadmins.org for more information.
Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!
The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson

A few weeks back, we talked with Jamf about identifying hallmarks of AI Use on device. However, on-device AI use is only part of the story these days. We welcome back Joel Rennich from JumpCloud to talk about what agent identity looks like in July of 2026.
Hosts:
Tom Bridge - @tbridge@theinternet.social
Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom
Selina Ali - LinkedIn
Guests:
Joel Rennich - LinkedIn
Matt Slocum - LinkedIn
Links:
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-klrc-aiagent-auth-00.html 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/wimse/documents/
https://spiffe.io/
https://github.com/spiffe/spiffe
https://oauth.net/2/dpop/
RFC-8693 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8693
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8693.html
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jul/10/2006-throwback-took-down-telstra-national-phone-networ
https://www.slate.auto/en
Sponsors:
Iru

Fleet Device Management
Workbrew
Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email podcast@macadmins.org for more information.
Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!
The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson

Platform Single Sign-on comes in several different flavours, and each of them offers a different user experience, and solves for Identity Security in a different way. Password Sync, Secure Enclave, and don't forget Smart Card (can anyone who manages them ever forget Smart Card?). There are very strict delineations between features available for one type, and not for another.  How do we work out what method is appropriate for our use case, and what settings we should be attempting to configure? Arki and Dan from Okta are back again today to discuss what the current PSSO landscape looks like
Hosts:
 
Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom
Selina Ali - LinkedIn
Guests:
Arki Krowczynski
Dan Hefley - LinkedIn
Links:
Okta Blog: https://www.okta.com/blog/product-innovation/okta-platform-sso-macos-secure-enclave/
Arki's Blog: https://blog.iamarki.ai/step-by-step-deploying-platform-sso-with-secure-enclave-support/
Sponsors:
Iru
Fleet Device Management
Workbrew
Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email podcast@macadmins.org for more information.
Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!
The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson